Nello's conversation with the Greek.

We follow Maso across the ante-chamber to the door on the left-hand,
through which we pass as he opens it. He merely looks in and nods,
while a clear young voice says, "Ah, you are come back, Maso. It is
well. We have wanted nothing."

The voice came from the farther end of a long, spacious room, surrounded
with shelves, on which books and antiquities were arranged in scrupulous
order. Here and there, on separate stands in front of the shelves, were
placed a beautiful feminine torso; a headless statue, with an uplifted
muscular arm wielding a bladeless sword; rounded, dimpled, infantine
limbs severed from the trunk, inviting the lips to kiss the cold marble;
some well-preserved Roman busts; and two or three vases from Magna
Grecia. A large table in the centre was covered with antique bronze
lamps and small vessels in dark pottery. The colour of these objects
was chiefly pale or sombre: the vellum bindings, with their deep-ridged
backs, gave little relief to the marble, livid with long burial; the
once splendid patch of carpet at the farther end of the room had long
been worn to dimness; the dark bronzes wanted sunlight upon them to
bring out their tinge of green, and the sun was not yet high enough to
send gleams of brightness through the narrow windows that looked on the
Via de' Bardi.

The only spot of bright colour in the room was made by the hair of a
tall maiden of seventeen or eighteen, who was standing before a carved
_leggio_, or reading-desk, such as is often seen in the choirs of
Italian churches. The hair was of a reddish gold colour, enriched by an
unbroken small ripple, such as may be seen in the sunset clouds on
grandest autumnal evenings. It was confined by a black fillet above her
small ears, from which it rippled forward again, and made a natural veil
for her neck above her square-cut gown of black _rascia_, or serge. Her
eyes were bent on a large volume placed before her: one long white hand
rested on the reading, desk, and the other clasped the back of her
father's chair.

The blind father sat with head uplifted and turned a little aside
towards his daughter, as if he were looking at her. His delicate
paleness, set off by the black velvet cap which surmounted his drooping
white hair, made all the more perceptible the likeness between his aged
features and those of the young maiden, whose cheeks were also without
any tinge of the rose. There was the